It looks like Dell is already pretty excited about Google's Chrome OS, as the company has released a highly experimental USB key image of the new operating system. It's made specifically for the Dell Mini 10v, but is far, far from stable of perfect. "It contains a functioning image of my USB key loaded with ChromiumOS. In addition, I have made a best effort attempt to get the Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter working in this image. It's definitely not perfect (read: highly experimental, untested, unstable, yada yada...) but it does appear to function."

Not that they 'need' luck - being the juggernaut that they are, but I do think that Chrome may well be the shape of things to come. Aside from a XCode and Final Cut Pro there is very little that I do on my laptop that I could not do in another OS or even in a cloud.
I am sure that there are some things like iPhoto or iTunes that I would not really want to do in the cloud, but for general purpose why not?

Now for the rant- Microsoft Office - MS should watch their back before they get their butt-steak served to them. I routinely use TextMate or any 'TEXT' editor to get the job done - I can think of no real reason to use office outside of the office. And if you do not need MS Office then why would you need MS Windows? It is not like the average home user needs Access or Powerpoint. They have had a great run as a monopoly but maybe that cash cow has been miled dry...

Maybe not Access, but Powerpoint? Seriously? I know that there are places on Earth where the norm is to use PDF/whatever for presentations, but, at least in my native country, PPT is so entrenched it is not funny. Not to mention the lousy speeches they give.

I'm already trying my very best to migrate people to OO.o / PDF, but there _are_ some real differences. For example, the graphing functions in OO.o is missing x errorbars (which in a scientific setting is hilarious)(I don't know if this has been rectified, though).